1. Field of the Invention
Implementations described herein relate generally to information retrieval and, more particularly, to returning results for local search queries.
2. Description of Related Art
The World Wide Web (“web”) contains a vast amount of information. Locating a desired portion of the information, however, can be challenging. This problem is compounded because the information on the web is constantly changing.
Search engines attempt to return hyperlinks to web pages in which a user is interested. Generally, search engines base their determination of the user's interest on search terms (called a search query) entered by the user. The goal of the search engine is to provide links to high quality, relevant results (e.g., web pages) to the user based on the search query. Typically, the search engine accomplishes this by matching the terms in the search query to a corpus of pre-stored web pages. Web pages that contain the user's search terms are “hits” and are returned to the user as links.
Local search engines are search engines that attempt to return relevant web pages and/or business listings within a specific geographic area. For a local search, a user may enter a search query associated with a geographic area in which the user is interested. The local search engine may return relevant results, such as relevant web pages pertaining to the geographic area or listings of businesses in the geographic area, to the user.
In a local search, the user may specify the geographic area in which the user is interested. Some local search engines provide separately labeled text entry fields in which the user may enter their local search query and the geographic area of interest. For example, the local search engine may present a “what” text input box and a “where” text input box to the user. The user may enter the search query, such as, for example, “pizza,” in the “what” box and a location, such as “Manhattan, N.Y.,” in the “where” box. The local search engine may then conduct a search for “pizza” in which relevant business listings and/or web pages that are associated with the geographic location corresponding to “Manhattan, N.Y.” are returned.
Some existing local search engines, instead of explicitly asking the user for separate “what” and “where” terms may present a single input search box to the user. Such an approach may be advantageous as it presents a simpler interface. The search engine may analyze the entered search query to attempt to determine the intended “what” and “where” portions. It is desirable that the analysis to partition the search query into the what and where portions reflect the user's intentions as much as possible.